


Always Got Yesterday.

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Series, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You'll tell my brother, right, Gilbert? That I, too, waited, for as long as I could?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Got Yesterday.

But it always leaves me wondering whether...  
In another life we'd be together.  
We should feel lucky we can say... we've always got yesterday  
Forget Me Not - Lucie Silva.

*

The news of Ada's ailings reach him in another country, two weeks after her fall. Leo looks at him sadly, and then agrees they should back. Vincent says nothing of this, simply making arrangements and Gil finds himself missing Lottie again, who's been dead for almost a year, at the way his brother grieves.

"I wasn't in love with her," Vince tells him, when he asks. Was it sixty years ago, with the Vincent he was barely starting to know, the Vince who was so guarded against everyone,Gil would have doubted him. 

But Vince, these days, is his best friend. He knows how Vince looks when he lies, when he doesn't want to talk about something. And as he says he doesn't love Ada Summerton nee Vessalius, he looks sad, but honest to the core.

"I thought you did," Gil says instead.

Vincent stays quiet for a moment, as he finishes fixing the flowers Gil is to talke with him. "I could have," he says, finally. "Quite easily, if I had allowed myself the chance. When I courted her, I only cared about disappearing and she was part of my plan to achieve that. She was too kind-- I didn't know how to deal with something... someone like her. And then it wasn't meant to happen."

Vincent ties a blue ribbon to the bouquet of flowers. Lilac scabiosa, blue forget-me-nots, white roses, and Gil wonders if this is the way his brother can handle the truth. 

*

Ada's eldest son, Oscar, greets him with a 'welcome home, uncle Gil', even if the youngest grandchildren (and great grand children, even) look confused. Gil just smiles, says yes to the tea, no to the offer of supper. Most of Ada's children and grandchildren take after her husband: dark haired and dark eyed - and they look at him with open curiosity. But one of her youngest granddaughters is blonde and green eyed and her uncle tells her to take 'mister Gil' to see her grandmama. Gil remembers Ada being that young, remembers her climbing over her brother's lap just as he remembers the way Oz used to smile whenever his little sister called him brother. 

The Ada that smiles at him now is wrinkled all over, green eyes misty with cataracts, her white hair curled in a braid by her shoulder. 

"Thank you very much, Sarah," she greets her granddaughter. "Could you ask your mother for some tea, please? Ginger would be nice, and maybe some cinnamon cookies, please?"

After the young girl leaves, Ada gives him a bright smile that, to Gil, makes it easy to ignore the wrinkled face and remember her when she was young and ignore the tank of oxygen by her side.

"You still remember my favorite tea, miss Ada," he says, getting closer than it's polite, so he can offer her the flowers. Back when they were young, he wouldn't have dared to, but this era is more open with affection and he brushes a kiss against Ada's forehead. 

"Well, of course I do," she dimples at him. "I'll let you know, Gilbert, that I have an excellent memory for someone my age."

Not like Reim, Gil doesn't think, whom by the time he died he didn't remember his own name. At that time, he had simply been thankful that Sharon had died first. Now, he doesn't know if it's a kindness or not, for normal people, to be able to forget as they go away. 

"Where have you been lately?" Ada asks him. "Anywhere exciting?"

"Just traveling," he says. "Nothing quite different from my letters, miss Ada. You got them, yes?"

"Yes, and I had my grandchildren read them," Ada tries to laugh and ends up coughing, waving his hand away when he approaches her. "They think that everything their grandmother has told them is a fairytale."

"Well, it does sound like one," Gil says gently.

"It does, but I would still have them know the story, so that they know my brother when he comes back." Ada sighs, and then reaches her hand towards him. Her skin feels papery fragil when Gil holds her hand. He can almost feel the bones moving there. "You'll tell my brother, right, Gilbert?" she looks at him, eyes sad and longing. "That I, too, waited, for as long as I could? Almost ninety years... I did my best."

Her hand feels so frail in his that Gilbert doesn't dare tighten his hold on it much. But he squeezes gently, softly. "Of course, miss Ada. I'll tell Oz everything."

"And you'll introduce him to my children and grandchildren," she nods. "My great grandchildren are too small, so they don't know the stories. But even if by the time he comes back we're not related, we still are by the chains of our hearts. So this is his family, too."

"I will," Gil promises, feeling his throat tighten. 

"Thank you," Ada says with a soft smile. Gil doesn't have to look up to know that her misty-green eyes are full with tears. "I've written letters for him, and saved storybits in journals and photographs, and I know it's not enough, but I want the Oz that will come back to know that he still had a little sister who loved him very, very much."

"I'll tell him," Gil repeats, throat tight, considering that this is the third time this particular task has been entrusted to him, all these memories of people who have gone and disappeared from this world. 

"I know you will. And I'm sorry to ask this of you," Ada wipes her cheek carelessly of tears, then holds the bouquet closer to her. There's silence for a moment as they both control themselves and, when Ada speaks again, she does so against the flowers that his brother picked out for her. "I would ask one last favor of you, Gilbert."

*  
The house is completely quiet as he slips inside. While it's a big house for todays standards, it's not enough for the army of children that sleep in piles of blankets over the floor of the living room. Ada, he knows, had five children with her husband, and each of them has had children of their own. A big, happy, noisy family, for the grandmother who grew up all alone in a mansion that could have swallowed this house whole.

She's sleeping alone in her room, the chimney down to embers and the first thing he does is put another log in there, lest she feel cold. It's a cozy room with the walls covered with pictures, and anywhere that can hold a vase has one, covered with flowers. The one that Gil took to her is by her nightstand. 

When he approaches, Vincent dislikes the bitter taste in his throat, makes himself swallow around it. He moves to sit by the chair by her side and realizes he doesn't know if he ought to touch her hand or not, if he ought to simply stay there, if he should say anything at all.

He doesn't have to, in the end. As Vincent hesitates, Ada blinks slowly and opens almost-completely-blind-eyes towards him and smiles.

"Good evening, mister Vincent," Ada says, gently.

Somewhere, in the place where he almost loved her, his heart aches. His voice is just as soft as he reaches for her hand and smiles. 

"Good evening to you as well, miss Ada."

*

Come morning, the news that Mrs Ada Summerton, beloved mother and grandmother, died, travel through the city of Reveil. She died in her sleep, they say, and she was smiling. 

Vincent doesn't tell anyone what her last words were, not even to Gil.


End file.
